The human race has seen a continued evolution from hunters, food gatherers to agrarian economies, from industrial, informatic to digital societies of today. In every era mankind has attempted to improve and adapt management and leadership styles to best suit the needs of the time and the prevalent social, political or economic environment.
The world of traditional leadership, a discipline that was born out of the worldview based on determinism and reductionism, a paradigm that says that business operations can be dissected into a predictable set of cause-and-effect relationships among the parts. It’s left brain, linear, logical thinking at its best, it’s analytical. This mechanistic view has led to the conclusion that we can plan with confidence.
Given the uncertainties and realities of today’s economic and business environment, the bitter truth is that we are operating in a bewildering new environment in which little is certain, the tempo is quicker, and the dynamics are more complex.
As organizations across the world grapple with today’s business environment in their own different ways, what is common is coming to an understanding of the business challenges of the current volatile, globalized and hyper-connected environment and what it means to survive in an age of upheaval, to master business and organizational challenges, to be in the limelight continually, to make decisions under extreme uncertainty—offers a useful starting point for understanding today’s business landscape.
The global economy is being reshaped by the convergence of forces: there is an exponential increase in the pace of innovation; new technologies are disrupting old industries and creating new ones, communication networks are spawning at astonishing speed: and global emergencies keep on erupting suddenly. Nothing is further from the truth that the organizations of today face extraordinary new challenges and must learn to think differently about their purpose and how to fulfill it.
21st Century Leadership Development: The New Challenges
The very fact of today’s economic environment is that we are living in a volatile environment where businesses are driven more by opportunity than by any other marketing wisdom. What is very simple and basic is that what we are witnessing is an industrial revolution that is happening right now, is just unstoppable and is changing the way we will think, work and live.
Globalization and the emergence of the digital era are subjecting organizations to a new set of demands resulting in the business context becoming more and more dynamic, complex and heterogeneous. The new competitive pressures make it imperative for organizations to continuously adjust the strategy and structure to the external business environment.
The key competence of an organization then in such a scenario is the ability to anticipate, the agility to implement future changes, being flexible, developing new strategies in tandem with the new dynamics and altering the organizational elements to achieve coherence between BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, STRATEGIC ORIENTATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN. Any delays in responding to implementing change or addressing the inadequacies of the elements of the organizational design can cost the organization its place in the market.
Going forward organizations will have to manage the response to the challenges that accompany the intensification of the fourth industrial revolution and of the digital era to ensure a successful market position. They will have to define strategies to monitor changes in the external business environment, assess the impact of such changes on their strategic management and accordingly introduce changes in the strategic orientation.
For today’s high-speed, change-driven business organizations, the world of traditional leadership belongs to the past. The paradigm must shift. Any organization that doesn’t make that shift is sure to be lost in the turbulence, considering the realities of today’s business environment where ADAPTABILITY, AGILITY AND INNOVATIVENESS are imperatives for sustenance.
As much as the changing global environment brings greater risks, it also opens up greater opportunities and the challenges of today bring with themselves an opportunity within the organization to develop its people. DEVELOPING THE TALENT SET OF THE INDIVIDUALS IN A CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT IS THE KEY TO OVERCOMING TODAY’S ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES IN THE 21st CENTURY.
Shifting the Paradigm
For businesses to be sustainable, relevant and resourceful in the face of everyday chaos and uncertainty calls for organizations to learn agility, adaptability and innovativeness and this can be achieved only by a process of massive change entailing a 360 degrees transformation. Many businesses across the globe have only recently started to realize the pain of not having a leadership development process in a contemporary context in place and are struggling to adopt the traditional practices in the volatile environment without realizing the futility of the whole exercise.
It’s time to awaken to the realities of today’s business environment and discover the way to survive and thrive under the new circumstances starting with a new mind-set which is based on the reality that change is the norm needed to succeed under such extreme circumstances. A mind-set that enables its practitioners to keep business operations under control in the face of volatility, while providing value to the outcomes each step of the way. A mind-set that enables leadership competencies comprising of principles, values, skills, tools, and practices that are compatible with change and uncertainty and form the sum and substance of contemporary leadership.
Against the backdrop of the leadership challenges of the current volatile, globalized and hyper-connected environment and what it means to lead in an age of upheavals, to master personal challenges, to make decisions under extreme uncertainty and address the need for nurturing leaders of tomorrow, it can be envisaged that leadership in the 21st century to being the ability to gain and sustain the commitment of others, unleash motivation and innovation, establish the trust and confidence to succeed and ensure that customers receive value each step of the way. By all means, 21st century leadership will evolve as a high speed and a very complex process that initiates interactions among different people seeking desirable outcomes under conditions of high uncertainty, high stress and high change and such a process then necessitating replacement of the traditional leadership traits of predictability, command and control by uncertainty, improvisation and spontaneity.
Objectively speaking, leadership development for the 21st century has to start with a new mindset considering the following elements that characterize the turbulent and rapidly changing environment in which we operate;
• A better way of understanding leadership given the business challenges that the world is throwing at us today
• Learning to deal with the business challenges that feature high change, high speed and high stress
• Developing a culture that adjusts continually to sudden competitive threats, new technologies, changes in regulations, frequently changing consumer needs, etc.
• Developing a leadership approach that acknowledges the complexity and fluid nature of business change
• Proven approaches that facilitate success in the face of extreme challenges
• Learning & development tools and techniques that accelerate performance at all levels essential for success under demanding circumstances
• Practices for becoming an agile organization that accommodates high change and still has predictability
• Developing a progressive culture that encourages self-leadership, innovation leadership and organizational agility
• Developing senior managers who are ready to do away with counterproductive organizational practices and replace them with a management practice that is change tolerant and adaptable to all types of situations, from traditional to extreme
When it comes to leadership development the most critical challenge today is the insufficiency of resources, both academic and institutional, to churn out dynamic leaders with advanced capacities who can adaptively lead self, others and the organization through multiple level of complexities for achieving desired outcomes for self, others and the organization. It then falls upon organizations to forge LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT models that will link the knowledge, skills and concepts relevant to the leadership competencies of the 21st century, to the practice of leadership within actual work organizations.
Jammu Navani
Organizational development, Leadership & Entrepreneurship Coach,
Corporate Trainer, Management Consultant
Experiential Entrepreneurship 